Anders Breivik and the English Defence League

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian psychopath who killed at least seventy-six people in Oslo on Friday, spent nearly a decade plotting his crimes. We know this because he recorded the evolution of his beliefs, and his conviction that bloodshed would consummate them, in a bizarre 1,518-page PDF document entitled “2083.” (“Kindle, nook or iPad is a hardware platform (LCD board) very suitable for reading ebooks and other digital media. It costs as little as 100-200 USD on the second hand,” Breivik noted.) We learn from “2083” that Shakespeare could not have been a Muslim, and that Breivik “decided to sell my dear Breitling Crosswind and my Montblanc Meisterstück pen in January in order to strengthen my operational budget.” His crusade began in April of 2002, when he and eight “founding members” convened in London to establish a modern-day chivalric order they called Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, the Knights Templar. Breivik wrote, “The order was created by and for the free indigenous peoples of Europe. One of the primary purposes of the tribunal and order is to attempt/contribute to seize political and military control of Western European multiculturalist regimes and to try, judge and punish Western European cultural Marxist/multiculturalist perpetrators (category A, B and C traitors) for crimes committed against the indigenous peoples of Europe from 1955 until this day.” For nine years, while watching “True Blood” and eating Sunday dinners with his mother, he marinated in the self-perpetuating rhetoric of the pan-European far right.

Breivik’s self-image as a knight defending his country against imminent Muslim takeover is eerily similar to that of the English Defence League, a group I wrote about earlier this summer. And the E.D.L. was, it appears, one of Breivik’s influences. He wrote that he was Facebook friends with six hundred E.D.L. members, that he had met with “tens” of the group’s leaders, and that he had helped the group, when it was getting started, in 2009, to refine its ideology. (The Independent reported today that Breivik wanted to start a Norwegian Defence League, although there already was one, whose demonstrations Breivik may or may not have attended.)

Yesterday, the E.D.L. published a statement condemning Breivik and the Oslo murders—“We can categorically state that there has never been any official contact between him and the EDL,” it read. The key word in the E.D.L.’s statement is “official.” The E.D.L., which organizes street protests, does not have official requirements for membership. This allows the group, as I wrote, “to take credit for having lots of adherents”—about a hundred thousand, by Facebook’s count—“while conveniently disowning them when they do things, such as burning the Koran, that the group purports to disdain.”

This afternoon, I called Tommy Robinson, the E.D.L.’s leader, who called Breivik a “nutcase,” but said that European politicians risked similar atrocities if they didn’t start addressing “the fucking elephant in the room.” “I think it was predictable,” Robinson said of the attack. “I think it’s disgusting, and my thoughts and prayers are with all the victims. We don’t want English lads blowing themselves up on our soil, but that will happen if they don’t give us a platform.” He continued, “I don’t think any of them understand the undercurrent of anger. He’s just a sick lone individual, but you’ve got a lot of angry people. And if British politicians don’t learn from this, God forbid, it might happen again.”

So what was the connection between Brevik and the E.D.L.? For Breivik, the E.D.L., which has, at times, been violent, had not been violent enough. “The EDL, although having noble intentions are in fact dangerously naïve. EDL and KT principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically AND organizationally,” Breivik wrote, on page 1438 of “2083.” But street protesting, Breivik wrote, was one of eight fronts that should “work like an organism” to defeat multiculturalism, and “it is highly advisable to structure any street protest organization after the English Defence League (EDL) model as it is the only way to avoid paralyzing scrutiny and persecution.” (Breivik, presumably, was referring to the fact—explained in today’s Daily Mirror by Nick Lowles, of the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate—that the British police do not consider the E.D.L. a far-right extremist group, a classification that would subject the group to increased governmental monitoring.)

No, the E.D.L., which bills itself as “a human rights organization that exists to protect the inalienable rights of all people to protest against radical Islam’s encroachment into the lives of non-Muslims,” does not condone the murders of civil servants and summer campers. But the E.D.L. and groups like it do contribute to the creation of worlds, online and actual, in which people like Breivik find reinforcement. They foster a community in which openness and tolerance are called treachery and threats to the nation’s well being. They gather kindling, but shrug when there’s a fire.